The effects of phonological awareness of Zulu‐speaking children learning to spell in English: A study of cross‐language transfer

Background. Emergent bilingual Zulu–English speaking children in South Africa have spoken but no written proficiency in Zulu (L1), yet are required to learn to spell English (L2) via English‐only literacy instruction. Little research exists on emergent bilingual's phonological awareness (PA) and spelling development, with no L1 formal literacy instruction. Thus, whether PA in a L1 impacts on literacy acquisition in the L2 remains unclear. Aims. Performance on monolingual PA, monolingual and emergent bilingual spelling was compared. In addition, PA and spelling in emergent bilingual Zulu–English speakers was explored to ascertain cross‐language transfer relationships. Sample. Thirty emergent bilingual Zulu–English and thirty monolingual English children in grade 2 participated. Method. Emergent bilinguals were assessed on Zulu PA, Zulu and English spelling skills. Monolinguals were assessed on English PA and English spelling skills. Results. Emergent bilinguals had more Zulu PA levels related to spelling English tasks than to spelling Zulu tasks, and both Zulu PA and Zulu spelling were positively related to English spelling tasks. Significant differences were found between L1 Zulu and English phoneme and rime PA levels, and L1 English and L2 English spelling tasks. Conclusions. Findings support the language‐universal hypothesis that L1 PA is related to spelling across languages in emergent bilinguals. In emergent bilinguals, both Zulu spoken proficiency and English‐only literacy instruction influences the underlying repertoire of PA skills used to spell within the L1 and the L2. Rime and phoneme PA and spelling skills in Zulu/English rely on language‐specific orthographic knowledge.     

Maturational Constraints on Language Learning

This paper suggests that there are constraints on learning required to explain the acquisition of language, in particular, maturational constraints. First, empirical evidence for this claim is reviewed. The evidence from several studies of both first and second language acquisition suggests that normal language learning occurs only when exposure to the language begins early in life. With exposure beginning later in life, asymptotic performance in the language declines: the effects over age of first exposure are approximately linear through childhood, with a flattening of the function in adulthood. These outcomes argue that some type of constraints ensuring successful language learning exist early in life, and weaken with increasing maturation. Second, two hypotheses are considered as to the nature of these maturational changes. One hypothesis is that constraints on learning particular to language acquisition undergo maturational decay. A second hypothesis, which is considered in more detail, suggests that language learning abilities decline because of the expansion of nonlinguistic cognitive abilities.     

Language and communicative development in Williams syndrome

Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder caused by a microdeletion of approximately 25 genes on chromosome 7q11.23, is associated with mild to moderate intellectual disability or learning difficulties. Most individuals with Williams syndrome evidence a cognitive profile including relative strengths in verbal short-term memory and language, and considerable weakness in visuospatial construction. The syndrome has often been argued to provide strong evidence for the independence of language from other aspects of cognition. We provide a brief history of early research on the language abilities of individuals with Williams syndrome and then review contemporary studies of language and cognition in Williams syndrome, beginning with a consideration of performance on standardized assessments. In the remainder of the article, we first consider early language acquisition, with a focus on speech production and perception, vocabulary acquisition, and communicative/pragmatic development and then consider the language abilities of school-age children and adolescents, focusing on semantics, grammar, and pragmatics. We argue that rather than being the paradigm case for the independence of language from cognition, Williams syndrome provides strong evidence of the interdependence of many aspects of language and cognition.     

词切分对印-英双语者阅读影响的眼动研究

以25名印-英双语者为被试,采用EyeLink2000眼动仪,探讨词切分对印-英双语者阅读的影响。实验一要求被试阅读印地语句子,实验二要求被试阅读英语句子,词切分方式有三种：正常条件、无空格隔词加灰条件和无空格条件。结果发现：（1）对印-英双语者阅读自己的两种官方语言来说,空格因素在其阅读中发挥着积极作用,删除空格会明显影响他们的阅读;（2）在无空格隔词加灰条件和无空格条件下,印-英双语者阅读英语时下降的速度显著低于阅读印地语的,这表明空格因素的作用会受语言特点的制约。     

Acquiring English as a second language via print: The task for deaf children

Only a minority of profoundly deaf children read at age-level. We contend this reflects cognitive and linguistic impediments from lack of exposure to a natural language in early childhood, as well as the inherent difficulty of learning English only through the written modality. Yet some deaf children do acquire English via print. The current paper describes a theoretical model of how children could, in principle, acquire a language via reading and writing. The model describes stages of learning which represent successive, conceptual insights necessary for second/foreign language learning via print. Our model highlights the logical difficulties present when one cannot practice a language outside of reading/writing, such as the necessity of translating to a first language, the need for explicit instruction, and difficulty that many deaf children experience in understanding figurative language. Our model explains why learning to read is often a protracted process for deaf children and why many fail to make progress after some initial success. Because language acquisition is thought to require social interaction, with meaning cued by extralinguistic context, the ability of some deaf individuals to acquire language through print represents an overlooked human achievement worthy of greater attention by cognitive scientists.     

Development of Spatial Language and Cognition in Hindi- and Sanskrit-Medium Schools

This paper describes a study carried out at Varanasi on the development of geocentric spatial cognition with 4–14 year old children of Hindi and Sanskrit medium schools. A number of tasks and procedures were used to assess the spatial frames of reference children used in describing and interpreting spatial displays. Analysis revealed that Sanskrit medium school children used more geocentric language and encoding than Hindi medium school children. The effect of age was significant only for encoding, not for language. Geocentric spatial cognition was significantly linked to fundamental spatial cognitive ability, as measured by Story-Pictorial Embedded Figures Test and Block Designs Test. The stronger expression of geocentric language and geocentric encoding in Sanskrit than Hindi medium school children suggests that the use of the ability can be sharpened by its practice and actualization in day-to-day life. The relationship between language and encoding was found to be of a moderate level suggesting that geocentric cognition is not determined by language alone, but also by other factors present in children’s eco-cultural contexts.     

Learning about sounds contributes to learning about words: Effects of prosody and phonotactics on infant word learning

This research investigates how early learning about native language sound structure affects how infants associate sounds with meanings during word learning. Infants (19-month-olds) were presented with bisyllabic labels with high or low phonotactic probability (i.e., sequences of frequent or infrequent phonemes in English). The labels were produced with the predominant English trochaic (strong/weak) stress pattern or the less common iambic (weak/strong) pattern. Using the habituation-based Switch Task to test label learning, we found that infants readily learned high probability trochaic labels. However, they failed to learn low probability labels, regardless of stress, and failed to learn iambic labels, regardless of phonotactics. Thus, infants required support from both common phoneme sequences and a common stress pattern to map the labels to objects. These findings demonstrate that early word learning is shaped by prior knowledge of native language phonological regularities and provide support for the role of statistical learning in language acquisition.     

Sentence interpretation in normal and aphasic Hindi speakers.

In interpreting a sentence, listeners rely on a variety of linguistic cues to assign grammatical roles such as agent and patient. The present study considered the relative ranking of three cues to agenthood (word order, noun animacy, and subject-verb agreement) in normal and aphasic speakers of Hindi. Because animacy plays a grammatical role in Hindi (determining the nature and acceptability of sentences without accusative marking), this language is relevant to the claim that Broca's aphasia involves a dissociation between grammar and semantics. Results of Study 1 with normal Hindi-dominant speakers showed that animacy is the strongest cue in this language, while agreement is the weakest cue. In Study 2, Hindi-English bilinguals were tested in both their languages. Most showed the normal animacy-dominant monolingual pattern in Hindi, with a mixture of strategies from both languages in their interpretation of English. A substantial minority showed mixed strategies in both languages. Only 5 of 48 subjects displayed a complete separation between languages, with animacy dominance in Hindi and word order dominance in English. In Study 3, two Hindi-English bilinguals with Broca's aphasia were tested in both languages. Results indicate (a) greater use of animacy in Hindi than in English and (b) greater use of word order in English than in Hindi. The strategies displayed by these patients fall well within the range observed among bilingual normals. We conclude that the use of animacy in sentence interpretation by these aphasic patients reflects preservation of normal, language-specific processing strategies; it cannot be interpreted as a nonlinguistic strategy developed to compensate for receptive agrammatism. Results are discussed in light of other cross-linguistic evidence on sentence comprehension in monolingual and bilingual aphasics.     

Increased Stroop interference with better second-language reading skill

Skilled readers demonstrate remarkable efficiency in processing written words, unlike beginning readers for whom reading occurs more serially and places higher demands on visual attention. In the present study, we used the Stroop paradigm to investigate the relationship between reading skill and automaticity, in individuals learning a second language with a different orthographic system. Prior studies using this paradigm have presented a mixed picture, finding a positive, a negative, or no relationship between the size of Stroop interference and reading skills. Our results show that Stroop interference in the second language was positively related to reading skill (when controlled for interference in the first language). Furthermore, interference was positively related to objective but not subjective indices of the amount of exposure to the second language. We suggest that the lack of consistency in the results of earlier studies may be due, at least in part, to these studies looking at Stroop interference in isolation, rather than comparing interference between languages.     

Increased Stroop interference with better second-language reading skill

Skilled readers demonstrate remarkable efficiency in processing written words, unlike beginning readers for whom reading occurs more serially and places higher demands on visual attention. In the present study, we used the Stroop paradigm to investigate the relationship between reading skill and automaticity, in individuals learning a second language with a different orthographic system. Prior studies using this paradigm have presented a mixed picture, finding a positive, a negative, or no relationship between the size of Stroop interference and reading skills. Our results show that Stroop interference in the second language was positively related to reading skill (when controlled for interference in the first language). Furthermore, interference was positively related to objective but not subjective indices of the amount of exposure to the second language. We suggest that the lack of consistency in the results of earlier studies may be due, at least in part, to these studies looking at Stroop interference in isolation, rather than comparing interference between languages.     

Number processing of Arabic and Hebrew bilinguals: Evidence supporting the distance effect

In the current study, a direct assessment of the effect of language lexical‐syntactic structure and magnitude semantic access on numerical processing was made by contrasting the performance of Arabic/Hebrew bilinguals in a digital (Hindi‐digits/Arabic‐digits) and verbal numerical comparison task (Arabic, an inverted language: Units‐Decades, Hebrew, a non‐inverted language: Decades‐Units). Our data revealed in the digital presentation format (Experiment 1) a regular distance effect in Arabic language‐Hindi digits and Hebrew language‐Arabic digits, characterized by an inverse relation between reaction times and numerical distance with no difference in the mean reaction times of participants in Arabic‐L1 and Hebrew‐L2. This indicates that both lexical digits of two‐digit numbers in L1 and L2 are similarly processed and semantically accessed. However in the verbal presentation format (Experiment 2) a similar pattern of distance effect was found, but the mean reaction times in Arabic were lower than in Hebrew in each numerical distance. This indicates that the processing of two‐digit number words in L1 and L2 is semantically accessed and determined by the syntactic structure of each language.     

Combining Exposure and Pharmacotherapy in the Treatment of Social Anxiety Disorder: A Preliminary Study of State Dependent Learning

State dependent learning (SDL) occurs when learning acquired in one context is not retrievable in a different context. Although traditionally SDL is thought of in the context of substance use, the role of SDL should be considered during combined medication and exposure treatment for anxiety disorders. Data are presented from a within-subjects, case-series design of four participants with social anxiety disorder. Participants engaged in a series of situational exposures while taking either alprazolam (0.75 mg), propranolol (40 mg), placebo or no medication. They returned 48 h later and engaged in the same situational exposure in an unmedicated state to determine retention of learning following the shift in drug context. Results suggest that SDL effects are possible when combining pharmacotherapy (alprazolam) with exposure therapy. Future research is needed determine the conditions under which SDL is most likely to occur and ways to facilitate transfer of learning across different contexts.     

The language-specific nature of grammatical development: evidence from bilingual language learners

The fact that early lexical and grammatical acquisition are strongly correlated has been cited as evidence against the view that the language faculty is composed of dissociable and autonomous modules (Bates & Goodman, 1997). However, previous studies have not yet eliminated the possibility that lexical-grammar associations may be attributable to language-general individual differences (e.g. children who are good at learning words are good at learning grammar). Parent report assessments of toddlers who are simultaneously learning English and Spanish (n = 113) allow an examination of the specificity of lexical-grammar relationships while holding child factors constant. Within-language vocabulary-grammar associations were stronger than cross-language relationships, even after controlling for age, proportion of language exposure, general language skill and reporter bias. Similar patterns were found based on naturalistic language samples (n = 22), ruling out a methodological artifact. These results are consistent with the view that grammar learning is specifically tied to lexical progress in a given language and provide further support for strong lexical-grammatical continuity early in acquisition.     

Why so curious? Validation and cross‐cultural investigation of the Hindi Epistemic Curiosity Scale

Epistemic curiosity (EC) is the motive and need to seek knowledge. The present work entails validation of the English EC Scale translated into the Hindi language. Study 1 comprised confirmatory factor analysis of the Hindi scale using a sample of 223 bilingual Indians (143 females). The 10‐item two‐factor structure with Interest and Deprivation subscales was validated for the Hindi EC Scale. Convergent and discriminant validity was established, and model fits were assessed separately for males and females, along with measurement invariance testing. In Study 2, linguistic invariance testing and cross‐cultural comparisons were undertaken for a sample of 151 Indians (93 females) and 219 Americans (179 females) for the EC scales, to assess similarities in the underlying factor structure. Indians did not differ from Americans in their responses to the English EC Scale, but slight differences were observed for the Hindi EC Scale, suggesting an interplay of language and culture. Further, independent t tests compared the two samples on measures of curiosity, gossip, personality, and affect. Americans had a higher tendency toward interpersonal curiosity and agreeableness whereas Indians scored higher on intellect. Cross‐cultural and linguistic differences as well as future work are presented. In sum, the Hindi EC Scale is a valid and reliable instrument that can facilitate further translations into other Indian languages.     

Factors Affecting Mental Health of North Indian Adolescents

The study explored the different factors that affect mental health of adolescents. A total of 1209 adolescents participated of which 591 adolescents responded in English and 618 adolescents responded in Hindi. The participants were given a language choice. About 1089 adolescents were attending school and 120 adolescents were school dropouts. In the current study, original tripartite structure of Hindi-translated Mental Health Continuum Short Form was confirmed. The measurement invariance results indicated that Mental Health Continuum Short Form is a valid scale in English and Hindi languages. Multivariate results indicated age group (early vs. middle vs. late), type of school (government vs. private), place of residence (urban vs. rural), ability to express thoughts and opinion in front of parents, presence of relaxed environment at home and satisfaction with dressing style affected adolescent’s mental health. Adolescents attending school displayed better mental health functioning than drop outs.     

The "Perceptual Wedge Hypothesis" as the basis for bilingual babies' phonetic processing advantage: new insights from fNIRS brain imaging

In a neuroimaging study focusing on young bilinguals, we explored the brains of bilingual and monolingual babies across two age groups (younger 4-6 months, older 10-12 months), using fNIRS in a new event-related design, as babies processed linguistic phonetic (Native English, Non-Native Hindi) and nonlinguistic Tone stimuli. We found that phonetic processing in bilingual and monolingual babies is accomplished with the same language-specific brain areas classically observed in adults, including the left superior temporal gyrus (associated with phonetic processing) and the left inferior frontal cortex (associated with the search and retrieval of information about meanings, and syntactic and phonological patterning), with intriguing developmental timing differences: left superior temporal gyrus activation was observed early and remained stably active over time, while left inferior frontal cortex showed greater increase in neural activation in older babies notably at the precise age when babies’ enter the universal first-word milestone, thus revealing a first-time focalbrain correlate that may mediate a universal behavioral milestone in early human language acquisition. A difference was observed in the older bilingual babies’ resilient neural and behavioral sensitivity to Non-Native phonetic contrasts at a time when monolingual babies can no longer make such discriminations. We advance the “Perceptual Wedge Hypothesis” as one possible explanation for how exposure to greater than one language may alter neural and language processing in ways that we suggest are advantageous to language users. The brains of bilinguals and multilinguals may provide the most powerful window into the full neural “extent and variability” that our human species’ language processing brain areas could potentially achieve.     

Formal models of language learning

Research is reviewed that addresses itself to human language learning by developing precise, mechanistic models that are capable in principle of acquiring languages on the basis of exposure to linguistic data. Such research includes theorems on language learnability from mathematical linguistics, computer models of language acquisition from cognitive simulation and artificial intelligence, and models of transformational grammar acquisition from theoretical linguistics. It is argued that such research bears strongly on major issues in developmental psycholinguistics, in particular, nativism and empiricism, the role of semantics and pragmatics in language learning, cognitive development, and the importance of the simplified speech addressed to children.     

Effects of past language experience and present language context on the shape bias in Spanish–English bilingual children

English‐monolingual children develop a shape bias early in language acquisition, such that they more often generalize a novel label based on shape than other features. Spanish‐monolingual children, however, do not show this bias to the same extent (Hahn & Cantrell, 2012). Studying children who are simultaneously learning both Spanish and English presents a unique opportunity to further investigate how this word‐learning bias develops. Thus, we asked how Spanish–English bilingual children (M_age = 21.31 months) perform in a novel‐noun generalization (NNG) task, specifically examining how past language experience (i.e. language exposure and vocabulary size) and present language context (i.e. whether the NNG task was conducted in Spanish or English) influence the strength of the shape bias. Participants completed the NNG task either entirely in English (N = 16) or entirely in Spanish (N = 16), as well as language understanding tasks in both English and Spanish to ensure that they understood what the experimenter was asking them to do. Parents completed a language exposure survey and vocabulary checklists in Spanish and English. There was a significant interaction between condition and choice type: Bilingual children in the English condition showed a shape bias in the NNG task, but bilingual children in the Spanish condition showed no reliable biases. No measures of past language experience were related to NNG task performance. These results suggest that when learning new words, bilingual children are attuned to the regularities of the present language context, and prior language experiences may play a more secondary role.     

African Dreamers and Healers

The author spent five summers in South Africa, doing a cross-cultural study of the indigenous healers among the Zulus in Natal Province, near Durban. She compared the indigenous healers, the isangomas, with a second and seemingly evolving group of healers in the Zulu culture, called prophets. The prophets are connected with a powerful, breakaway Christian movement in South Africa and other parts of Africa that is known as the African Independent Churches or AIC. In this article she shares the conclusions of her research and her comparison of the ways the Zulu healers interpret and value dreams and how Jungian analysts might interpret similar dreams. She sought to identify and understand how the Zulu god-image might be in flux as the Zulu culture is changing in response to other cultures, in particular, the more powerful Western European culture with its advanced technology. Relying on Edward Edinger's conceptualization of the consequences of the destruction of the god-image, she concludes that, in this case, instead of the “cup being broken,” it could be that the “cup is changing its shape.”